Why Falls Are the Biggest Injury Risk for Older Adults in Louisiana, and Who Is Legally Responsible
A fall is the one injury people stop taking seriously as they get older, at exactly the age when it becomes the most consequential thing likely to happen to them. The language around it does not help. A younger person has an accident. An older person has a fall, and the phrasing quietly assigns the cause to the person rather than to the step.
That instinct is wrong often enough to matter, and in Louisiana it costs families claims they did not know existed.
Where These Falls Actually Happen
Not mostly in stores
Public attention goes to supermarket aisles, but the falls that disable older adults overwhelmingly happen in buildings they occupy daily, including apartment units, common stairwells, assisted living corridors and the walkways between parking and a front door. Federal guidance on falls and fractures in older adults sets out how the combination of changing vision, medication effects and reduced balance raises the risk, and how much of that risk is environmental rather than medical.
The consequences compound
A hip fracture at seventy-five is not a longer version of a hip fracture at thirty-five. It brings surgery, extended rehabilitation, a loss of independence that frequently never reverses, and a cascade of secondary problems. Damages in these cases are driven by what the injury ends rather than what it costs to treat.
The Civil Code Route Most Families Never Hear About
Liability for things in someone’s custody
Louisiana does not require a claimant to prove a store-style burden in every setting. Under Civil Code article 2317.1, the owner or custodian of a thing answers for damage caused by its ruin, vice or defect, where the claimant shows the defendant knew or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known of the defect, that reasonable care would have prevented the damage, and that the defendant failed to exercise it.
A loose handrail, a broken stair tread, a disintegrating threshold and an unlit stairwell are all things in someone’s custody.
The provision aimed at buildings
Article 2322 addresses building owners directly. An owner answers for damage from a building’s ruin where the cause is neglect to repair it or a vice or defect in its original construction, subject to the same showing about knowledge and reasonable care.
The phrase that matters there is neglect to repair. These claims are rarely about a hazard that appeared that morning. They are about something that was reported, logged and left.
According to personal injury lawyer Nicholas R. Thompson, Principal and Managing Partner at RTRLAW, claims involving older adults are frequently abandoned early because the family accepts that the fall was simply part of aging, when the maintenance file usually shows the step or the rail had been reported more than once. Families in that position often speak with a Louisiana slip and fall lawyer once they learn how much of the relevant history sits in records they are entitled to request.
Who These Provisions Reach
Custody is a broader idea than ownership. A management company running a building, a landlord who has delegated maintenance to a contractor, and a facility operating a residence all have custody of the things inside it. That breadth is what makes these articles useful where a merchant-focused analysis would not apply at all.
Residential facilities keep more records than people expect
Assisted living and nursing operations document incidents, care plans and maintenance as a condition of how they are regulated. A resident’s fall is almost never undocumented. The question is whether anyone asks for the document before it ages out of the retention schedule.
Proving What the Owner Knew
The paper trail usually exists
Work order systems, maintenance request logs, emails to a property manager and complaints from other residents are the material that satisfies the knowledge requirement. A single prior written request about the same handrail does more than any description of the fall itself.
Photograph before the repair
The hazard is often fixed within days, sometimes within hours, and the repair is strong evidence that something needed repairing. Photographs taken before it is corrected, with something in frame for scale, preserve what the building looked like on the day.
Ask about prior incidents
Buildings and facilities frequently know about earlier falls at the same location. That history is discoverable, and it converts a one-off event into a pattern the owner was aware of.
The Time Limit Is Shorter Than Most States
Louisiana historically allowed only one year for tort claims. Under Act 423 of 2024, delictual actions are now subject to a two-year prescriptive period running from the day the injury is sustained, applying prospectively to incidents from July 1, 2024. Two years remains tighter than most of the country, and for a family absorbed in months of rehabilitation it passes faster than anyone expects. Incidents before that date remain governed by the old one-year rule, which still catches people who assume the change was retroactive. The practical consequence is that the record-gathering described above cannot wait for the recovery to finish.